Technical Field
The present invention relates to an in-vehicle camera that is attached to a windshield from inside the vehicle.
Background Art
An in-vehicle camera that monitors the conditions ahead of the vehicle includes a bracket attached to a windshield and an in-vehicle camera body fixed to the bracket.
Such an in-vehicle camera is attached to the windshield in the course of manufacturing the vehicle. Specifically, in the manufacture, the bracket is attached to the windshield in advance and then the windshield is mounted to the vehicle body using an adhesive, followed by screwing the in-vehicle camera body to the bracket.
According to another method, an in-vehicle camera, although not aimed to monitor the conditions ahead of the vehicle, is attached to a windshield as follows. Specifically, in this method, a button is attached to the windshield in advance, while a hook, to which the button is fitted, is mounted to an in-vehicle camera body, and the hook is moved along the windshield so as to be hooked on the button (e.g., see JP-A-2004-082829).
However, the step of attaching the windshield to the in-vehicle camera body is performed after mounting the windshield to the vehicle using an adhesive, i.e. performed before the adhesive is completely cured.
Therefore, when the bracket is pushed strongly such as by a jig in mounting the in-vehicle camera to the bracket, the windshield may come off from the vehicle, or the windshield may be scratched by the jig.
The method of attaching a button to a windshield in advance, followed by hooking thereon a hook provided to the in-vehicle camera body involves the following problem. The problem is that, since tolerances are set to the button and the hook respectively, the in-vehicle camera body is not completely fixed to the windshield.
In the case of an in-vehicle camera for monitoring the conditions ahead of the vehicle, a possible occurrence of looseness due to the tolerances leads to a problem of disabling correct monitoring of the conditions ahead of the vehicle.
Specifically, an in-vehicle camera for monitoring the conditions ahead of the vehicle is often used for grasping a positional relationship of the vehicle equipped with the in-vehicle camera relative to vehicles, persons and the like ahead of the vehicle, which are imaged by the in-vehicle camera. In this case, the occurrence of looseness in the in-vehicle camera leads to a problem that the grasped positional relationship is incorrect accordingly.